Smith of Wootton Major. Pauline Baynes

last his son looked at him, and ‘Father,’ he said, ‘do you remember the day when you came back with the Flower? And I said that you looked like a giant by your shadow. The shadow was the truth. So it was the Queen herself that you danced with. Yet you have given up the star. I hope it may go to someone as worthy. The child should be grateful.’

      ‘The child won’t know,’ said the smith. ‘That’s the way with such gifts. Well, there it is. I have handed it on and come back to hammer and tongs.’

      It is a strange thing, but old Nokes, who had scoffed at his apprentice, had never been able to put out of his mind the disappearance of the star in the Cake, although that event had happened so many years ago. He had grown fat and lazy, and retired from his office when he was sixty (no great age in the village). He was now near the end of his eighties, and was of enormous bulk, for he still ate heavily and doted on sugar. Most of his days, when not at table, he spent in a big chair by the window of his cottage, or by the door if it was fine weather. He liked talking, since he still had many opinions to air; but lately his talk mostly turned to the one Great Cake that he had made (as he was now firmly convinced), for whenever he fell asleep it came into his dreams. Prentice sometimes stopped for a word or two. So the old cook still called him, and he expected himself to be called Master. That Prentice was careful to do; which was a point in his favour, though there were others that Nokes was more fond of.

      One afternoon Nokes was nodding in his chair by the door after his dinner. He woke with a start to find Prentice standing by and looking down at him. ‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you, for that cake’s been on my mind again. I was thinking of it just now in fact. It was the best cake I ever made, and that’s saying something. But perhaps you have forgotten it.’

      ‘No, Master. I remember it very well. But what is troubling you? It was a good cake, and it was enjoyed and praised.’

      ‘Of course. I made it. But that doesn’t trouble me. It’s the little trinket, the star. I cannot make up my mind what became of it. Of course it wouldn’t melt. I only said that to stop the children from being frightened. I have wondered if one of them did not swallow it. But is that likely? You might swallow one of those little coins and not notice it, but not that star. It was small but it had sharp points.’

      ‘Yes, Master. But do you really know what the star was made of? Don’t trouble your mind about it. Someone swallowed it, I assure you.’

      ‘Then who? Well, I’ve a long memory, and that day sticks in it somehow. I can recall all the children’s names. Let me think. It must have been Miller’s Molly! She was greedy and bolted her food. She’s as fat as a sack now.’

      ‘Yes, there are some folk who get like that, Master. But Molly did not bolt her cake. She found two trinkets in her slice.’

      ‘Oh, did she? Well, it was Cooper’s Harry then. A barrel of a boy with a big mouth like a frog’s.’

      ‘I should have said, Master, that he was a nice boy with a large friendly grin. Anyway he was so careful that he took his slice to pieces before he ate it. He found nothing but cake.’

      ‘Then it must have been that little pale girl, Draper’s Lily. She used to swallow pins as a baby and came to no harm.’

      ‘Not Lily, Master. She only ate the paste and the sugar, and gave the inside to the boy that sat next to her.’

      ‘Then I give up. Who was it? You seem to have been watching very closely. If you’re not making it all up.’